The stranger your mother warned you against . . . an escaped lion . . . a friendly game of "party hypnosis" gone wrong . . .a severe infestation of cockroaches that proves nothing short of diabolic . . . These are a few of the bizarre and gripping situations J. Morris displays in this funny, unsettling, and brilliant collection. With acute, observant language and skewed imagination, Morris draws the boundary between childhood and growing up, reality and dreams, humor and pathos . . . and then erases it completely. In these stories, nothing is quite as it appears — but you will remember everything.

J. Morris

Stories

when i snap my fingers
​you will remember everything

Morris writes with precision, with wit, with imagination, and with a fierce lucidity that he makes look effortless. The stories collected here show great versatility and nimbleness, but a powerful theme runs just beneath the surface of virtually every one: These are ingeniously controlled stories about people struggling to maintain control, ​or at least a plausible illusion of it.

—Michael Griffith, fiction editor, Cincinnati Review, and author of Trophy